Sneak preview: Christina Ricci, Wicked and The Last King of Scotland

By Nicola Christie

12:01AM GMT 30 Jan 2006

Nicola Christie's insider guide to forthcoming attractions

• Fans of Christina Ricci's delicate features will be surprised to hear about her latest role - as a cursed woman born with the face of a pig. The actress, best known for her young turn as Wednesday in The Addams Family (1991), arrived in London last week to begin filming under the direction of American Mark Palansky, along with co-stars Hayden Christiansen and Reese Witherspoon. Penelope, as the movie is called, is a modern-day fairy-tale following Ricci's character as she tries to cast off her curse and fall in love.

• Another fairy-tale is set to hit London later this year. The blockbuster Broadway musical Wicked - a cunning and glorious take on The Wizard of Oz (it calls itself "The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz") - opens at the Apollo Victoria theatre in September. The show was staggeringly successful in America, thanks in no small part to the catchy score and book by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman.

• Following his success at the Edinburgh Fringe, idiosyncratic comedian Alex Horne has come up with a typically eccentric way of planning his first UK tour. "I'm only going to play Roman towns," he says. "That gives me 25 in total. So Manchester, Bicester and Leicester are all on the list." Horne will offer insights into the Roman origins of every town he visits, and each performance will open with a short film revealing how the high street would have looked before the likes of WH Smith and McDonald's came along. The tour kicks off in March. "I'm starting in Chichester and ending up in Londinium."

• Scottish director Kevin Macdonald, the man behind the award-winning documentaries Touching the Void and One Day in September, is putting the finishing touches to his first feature-length drama, The Last King of Scotland. It may be based on a work of fiction - Giles Foden's debut novel of the same name - but the film still contains elements of historical fact. "Idi Amin is the central character," Macdonald explains. "So it's a tricky one to label. We had a test screening recently in America and everyone thought it was a true story. If you sell something as true, it affects people very differently." The movie, which stars Gillian Anderson and James McAvoy, explores the brutal regime of the Ugandan dictator in the 1970s through the eyes of his personal doctor.